Coronavirus is highly contagious and can be fatal. So why am I flying into coronavirus zones? For fun. Kind of.
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US State Department Warnings
The US State Department holds warning levels for every country in the world formally recognized by the US government. The scale is 1-4 from “Exercise Reasonable Caution” to “Do Not Travel.” Hats off the State Department for avoiding any confusion on level 4 countries.
Italy currently has a Category Four ranking right now, as does North Korea (though for very different reasons) to provide some context. Japan and South Korea are Level Three, Malaysia is Level One.
Taking Advantage of Opportunity
I mentioned last week that some amazing opportunities exist for travelers right now as the world economy grapples with coronavirus fear. At some point this year, I will need to catch up on my PQPs which I am able to earn at an expedited rate by flying United partners long distances on great deals.
This is the definition of great deal season.
While the deal I found wasn’t exemplary on the surface, what is helpful are two things caused by the Coronavirus situation. The first is that near term bookings are incredibly affordable compared to the last-minute surcharge airlines typically charge. The second is that clearing into upgrade space is a near certainty for elites with system-wide upgrade tools to use.
The deal I took was as Newark to Kuala Lumpur via Tokyo sold as an ANA ticket and flown by United from Newark to Tokyo and back in Premium Economy for about $1100. Again, the price is not legendary, but a guaranteed upgrade has been unheard of in recent years, and I was able to book a week before departure when it was also convenient for my family and my schedule.
- Flight Miles: 20,120
- Award Miles: 20,120
- PQPs: 4,024
Weighing the Risk
A traveler should weigh the risk and benefit of any deal in the current environment. My chief concern is being quarantined if the situation in Japan deteriorates once I have departed. When the outbreak in China took place, foreigners were denied US entry if they had traveled, from or through China is the prior 14 days and US residents would be quarantined for the same period but allowed entry.
I can’t lose 14 days for an unnecessary trip, but right now Japan is not yet a quarantine country so it’s a risk but I can’t be sure how highly substantial it is.
Contracting the virus is actually second on my list but more of inconvenience. I am outside of high-risk age groups with a decent immune system – I’ve had swine flu in the past, I’m not that bothered. I don’t feel as though contracting the disease would cause long term damage, nor result in my fatality, but I’d rather not contract it all the same.
Flight disruption is a final concern. Cathay Pacific has 120 of their 200 aircraft grounded right now. The three-minute video from South China Morning Post is worth a watch.
American Airlines stopped flying to Milan from Miami and JFK, not because they had to or chose to, but because their crews wouldn’t work the flights anymore and American wouldn’t (and shouldn’t) force them. Lufthansa has considered cancelling 50% of their flights and grounding all A380s.
But Japan is on the precipice of moving to that list. If my flight is cancelled, I am sure I can find another way home on a partner via Europe or Singapore, but that could add a lot of inconveniences and unscheduled time away as a result. I’ll just make be honest about where I’ve been.
Why I Booked It
There may be better deals later, I suspect in fact that there will be. However, I had the flexibility in my schedule, and I’m not missing any family time due to other plans. A good deal is always worth taking even if a better deal may come along because the value remains the same but a future deal may not ever unfold. Last year, I had to force a run when it was expensive and less convenient.
Conclusion
It may seem crazy to some travelers to fly through a country with known outbreaks when it’s not absolutely necessary. However, I believe the risk to my health is low, the opportunity is good and the timing is personally very convenient.
What do you think? Am I crazy, stupid or smart for grabbing a deal like this? Would you take these flights?
Seems irresponsible. Though it may not affect you, you may pick the virus up unbeknownst to you and pass it on to your wife and child which they didn’t sign up for your “fun”.
In Delhi India now. I too don’t have concerns about Coronavirus but the biggest concern was that I was facing a mandatory 14 day quarantine if I exhibited even something as small as a cough. India restricts passengers who have gone through China, Korea, Japan, Iran, and Italy as of this writing but as things start breaking out in the US and elsewhere, I was fearing that anyone who traveled/came from the US (or the UK where I’ve also traveled through recently) would be subject to the quarantine or denied entry. Saw a couple of passengers from Korea get escorted by police after hitting immigration; that’s the biggest worry.
^^^This
Tempting to travel for award space & upgrades & mileage runs. But I just can’t take a risk getting quarantined somewhere or back home for 2-4 weeks. If that happened, I’d have no one to take care of my house, job, dog, family matters. And last but least are the medical concerns.
We need to put this whole coronavirus in some context. Based on social media anyone would think it’s the only pathogen around. It’s not. There are dozens of diseases STILL around that can give you a nasty time or kill you. It’s just that in the past we have mostly ignored all those issues from a frequent traveler’s perspective. What’s different this time is the risk of quarantine catching you out while traveling. There are still risks from all the bugs out there that when you get home you might pass it on to your loved ones just as for the coronavirus. That said, travel safe Kyle. If you feel ill before you get home don’t ignore it; isolate yourself at a minimum somewhere. Also be prepared to be quarantined even though the risk may actually be quite small.
There are indeed lots of pathogens around, but few are so widespread, few are so easily communicable and few are at the x2-x3 more deadly than influenza. So while the panic is real, downplaying this disease is just as foolish.
Selfish. Even though you’re not personally likely to get the worst of this. By purposefully and unnecessarily travelling and increasing your risk of contracting the virus you are directly increasing the possibility that someone at higher risk will contract it. That’s someone’s grandma, grandpa, husband, wife, child with chronic illness, etc. that you might be killing.
I’m killing someone now? Is everyone that’s travelling a murderer?
Is everyone who’s traveling a murderer? Do you know the legal definition of “murder?” No, you clearly do not. When someone causes someone else’s death, it is called a homicide, but it is not murder. This is why manslaughter (of two types) and negligence (of two types) also exist. In this case, the cause would he a virus, but if you traveled, knowingly, into an infected area, in full knowledge of a high probability if you contracting and transmitting this disease, there is a case to make for criminal negligence and even a wrongful death lawsuit. This article would serve as evidence against you to prove you had full knowledge of possible repercussions and effects on others before making the decision.
So a murderer? No, not a “murderer“. Feel better now?
In the words of Sgt. Hulka, “Relax, Frances.”
And it was, “Lighten Up, Francis.”
You belong on Law and Order with such well-crafted manslaughter analogies on a “flu-like” illness that has a mortality rate of about half a percent.
No one knows the exact mortality rate at this point. Most likely it is around 2.4% given data from China which has the largest sample of cases. That far exceeds your “hunch.” The same “hunch” Dr. Trump has been mouthing off about.
And this virus is far more unpredictable than the seasonal Flu. First, because many get Flu shots to limit. And more importantly, because Coronavirus can be carried and past on by people with no symptoms.
@ Stuart
Your 2.4% is more of a panicked hunch.
“COVID-19 Mortality Rate May Be ‘Considerably Less Than 1%'”
https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/926089
And it was a Chinese study quoted from from the NEJM.
And according to the CDC the seasonal flu can spread while being asymptomatic, like COVID.
Please accept science. Your reply was filled with inaccuracies.
Spin it to fit your rose colored glasses, Pete. But look at these numbers and tell me if a mileage run and Kyle’s dancing on the graves of those who will die from this is justifiable.
“On Tuesday (March 5), Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of the World Health Organization, said during a news conference that about 3.4% of reported COVID-19 patients around the world have died. In a Chinese analysis of more than 72,000 case records, 2.3% of those confirmed or suspected (based on symptoms and exposure) to have the virus died. Patients above 80 years of age had an alarmingly high fatality rate of 14.8%. Patients ages 70 to 79 years had a fatality rate of 8%. In Italy, where the death toll from the virus stood at 52 as of March 4, the fatalities were all in people over age 60.”
Now go back to Fox News as the rest of us be adults in the room.
Hey Pete, How you feeling about your numbers now?
Well said. I certainly did not call anyone a murderer. Selfish and negligent but not a murderer…
I think the murderer description is a bit much. But, yeah, you are being irresponsible and could indirectly cause sickness in others. If this thing is to be contained it is to minimize for some weeks the movement of people – unless absolutely essential.
An early mileage run for giggles is not essential. Start thinking about others rather than yourself as you go about padding your miles on the cheap.
+1. There’s much that we still don’t know about this coronavirus and one of the things that makes it very threatening is that it could be transmitted by asymptomatic carriers and there also remains uncertainty about the gestation period of the virus. There are concerns that 14-days is an insufficient quarantine period. By needlessly increasing exposure, you may not be directly threatening yourself (presumably you are young and healthy), but you are putting at risk elderly people, immunocompromised people and those with chronic conditions (heart disease, diabetes, kidney disease etc). This is the definition of a selfish and cavalier attitude.
It’s interesting to see how much we embrace the science that fits our argument and ignore those facts that don’t fit.
The seasonal flu also is contagious prior to symptoms and can be spread a week after symptoms appear. That puts the period of spread close to the 10-14 days of COVID.
Saying that coronavirus is a more severe of the seasonal flu may be cold or dispassionate but it’s the truth.
You have a virus where the CDC and WHO disagree on the exact mortality rate, but believe it is somewhere between 1-2%. Is basically shutting down the world economy for an indefinite period of time warranted here? You had a doctor from Vanderbilt University quoted in an AP article advising senior citizens to “live like hermits” indefinitely. I’m not minimizing the effects of this thing – any outbreak that hits a nursing home or retirement community is going to be very, very bad for example – but this type of sheer mass panic isn’t helpful. And unless you enforce a Chinese-style lockdown on the entire United States, isn’t actually going to stop the virus from spreading.
“COVID-19 Mortality Rate May Be ‘Considerably Less Than 1%’”
https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/926089
And it was a Chinese study quoted from from the NEJM.
The CDC predicts that at least 12,000 Americans will die from the flu in any given year. As many as 61,000 people died in the 2017-2018 flu season, and 45 million were infected.
The common Flu.
Does the world come to a screeching halt because of the Flu? Do they quarantine cities and countries because of the flu? The average healthy person who does get this virus is less sick than most are with the flu. A slight fever for a day or so and no other symptoms. It’s deadly to high risk groups, the old and the immuno compromised because instead of being able to fight it, it becomes pneumonia. Just like the flu.
This is what I am saying.
This is “what you’re saying” because it fits your narrative.
You’re being irresponsible only because it benefits you. Others be damned.
I’ve read many public health experts who push back strongly against this line of reasoning. 1) The flu has been around for a long time and health systems generally know what to expect and plan for. This coronavirus is new and has tremendous uncertainties. We just don’t know how bad it could get which is why downplaying unknown risks is dangerous. 2) There is a flu vaccine. This coronavirus vaccine is at least a year away. 3) Because we know what to expect with flu, health systems are prepared. Coronavirus outbreaks on the other hand are completely overwhelming healthcare systems. In Italy the medical systems are at breaking point. This has an effect on everyone who needs access to the healthcare system coronavirus or not. 4) Mortality rate for the flu is far less than 1%. Mortality rate for coronavirus is anywhere between 1-4% (again a lot of unknowns is leading to this range). That’s a massive difference in epidemiological terms.
The bottom line is this is a deadly epidemic and our health systems and scientists need more time to gather more data, better understand it and be able to respond. Slowing down it’s spread is essential to getting that time. Therefore, dismissing the risks and travelling unnecessarily so that you could be unwittingly spreading it, even though the direct risks to yourself are limited is wrong.
I believe you mistakenly labelled Malaysia as Level 1, as currently the only Level 1 region according to the CDC is Hong Kong.
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/travelers/index.html
It’s the State Department, not CDC chart.
Japan is level 2.
Click bait title, that’s for sure.
I would and would not travel based on the need. If I were a blogger, I think there are other lower risks flights. If I had my own small company that depended on making a trip, then I might go. If I was a low ranking person in a large, multinational company where the trip was not really that important, I would try not to go. If I were a tourist, I would try to find some other place to travel. Basically, I would avoid SEA, YVR, South Korea, Hong Kong, mainland China, Iran, Iraq, Italy. I might avoid neighboring areas, like Switzerland, southern France.
I would be afraid that the number of cases in India and Iran are greater than is currently known. The number of cases in the US are probably slightly greater than is known. Singapore has been doing a good job of containing and treating people.
The title of the article is kinda weird but the article itself represents my point of view. I’m eagerly looking for opportunities now that’ll help me get PQMs for AA ExecPlat (I already have UA 1K) and looking for cheap Hyatt opportunities to requal Globalist. I normally work from home but would love to buy an overseas ticket and cheap hotel rate for a week to work from a hotel room. Also, great time to start buying summer vacations. I will not purchase a cruise – beyond quarantine you risk not being allowed into foreign ports when governments unexpectedly ban a ship from their port.
Unfortunately typical behaviour of “contributor to Time, the Washington Post, MSNBC, Yahoo!”: selfish, self-centered, “progressive and free spirited”….
If someone go you sick, then OMG, totally different….cause it will be YOU.
How do you arrive at the 4000 PQPs?
If you are flying a United operated flight no matter where you bought the ticket, you get 1 pqp for each $1, right?
Just as an example of what some countries would or could do, the Federated States Of Micronesia released a statement yesterday that says they will not allow anyone who comes from a country with documented COVID-19 cases into their country, unless that person first spent at least 14 days in a non-COVID-19 country first. FSM is a small island that had a chance at isolating itself successfully, but other countries may take similar measures, making travel difficult or impossible.
It’s not a bad idea! I hope you do it and look forward to seeing your reports.
Have you checked the quote for Brent and wti.
You will likely get better deals in a few deals.
Apart from age, those most at risk seem to be people with cardiovascular issues. So, as long as you’re not overweight I guess, why not? Looking forward to your reviews.
I have to say, you’re playing with fire here. We’re currently in a situation where the government can enforce a quarantine on anyone entering from certain locations with no advance notice. Or where your county health department can order you and your entire family into one because they believe you came into contact with a carrier of the virus on one of your flights. Do I think the reaction is overblown, yes. But is this really a risk you want to take?
Several cases in Australia are Australians returning from the USA on United ( different flights). 2 points come to mind: how are Australians picking up this virus in the US if there is no ( or limited) community-based transmission there? Is airline travel really as low risk as we’ve been led to believe? In that regard, look at the Vietnam Airlines London to Hanoi …10 passengers test positive after the flight. All in J.
I think you’re being a bit unwise in undertaking unnecessary travel at this time.
Echoing what others have said here, it does seem a bit irresponsible to do this, just for a mileage run.
Forget just the issue of quarantine, and even if you believe you won’t die if you get this disease…think about the people you could spread it to (ie, your family, friends, anyone you interact with, and who they could spread it to).
Nobody is saying you have to live like a hermit or panic, but unnecessary travel should be avoided. Whether or not a mileage run to re-qualify or whatever is considered unnecessary might be debatable by people on here, but at the end of the day, it just isn’t worth it.
And the title of this article, saying it’s “for fun”, is a bit in bad taste.
Oh please, if we were discussing this in December what would we be saying?
Is it worth it then?
” Oh but we now want the airlines to extend our status for free!”
As long as you have no problem with losing your status…
Kind of a moot point since who knows what we would have said in December. I have no idea what we would have said.
But in there here and now? Not really worth it, but if status is that important to you, then go for it “Pete”.
The problem with this article is not as much the bottom line decision you came to, but rather the fact that you apparently never considered the risk to anyone other than yourself.
Based on that, I can come to one (or more) of three conclusions about you from your article:
(a) You have no family and no friends that you care about;
(b) You’re a sociopath who cares nothing for your family and friends; and/or
(c) You’re a crap writer who forgot to mention what should be a critical part of the analysis on whether or not to travel to high-risk areas.
I can think of another conclusion:
He made an educated decision based on considering the risk of contracting something that poses no more than an 0.4-0.5% increase in absolute mortality risk when compared with the seasonal flu. If he and his family are young and healthy, then the overall risk increase is negligible.
Not everyone who thinks this is an overreaction is a sociopath.
Complete, utter, absolute BS. There are 2 possibilities here: you are incapable of reading simple scientific data OR you don’t care.
Perhaps both.
Greg, respectively, you omitted an option:
d) The global “pandemic” is less lethal than the flu, fatalities are consistent with the same but at a lower rate and the media have overblown this and scared the entire world when it’s not actually unsafe to travel.
That is simply not in line with the numbers we have. At the moment the fatality rate lies most likely somewhere between 0.5% and 5% (probably closer to the first though), which is 5 to 50 times higher than the flu (which of course kills at the moment far more people as far more get infected). We will have in a few month medication and eventually in maybe a year a vaccine which both will bring down the fatality rate, but until then the containment of the virus is our best option.
The title is completely wrong. Actually you’re flying out of a COVID-19 zone. There are more cases in the USA than in Japan (and considering the mess that is your healthcare-system at the moment we can only guess how many cases go undetected in the US as people might be afraid of the costs that might come with testing).
The chance that the situation in the USA deteriorates greatly in the near future is pretty high, so it might be Japan that might not let you in without quarantine first.
…other than that I’m clearly in the “you are completely irresponsible” camp
I think what’s dumber is there is no way the airlines are going to hold you to current requalification requirements. You’re literally flying for no reason.
I considered this too, but I have a feeling it will come more in the form of what Alaska is doing, a catch-up offer later in the year rather than a straight extension. The reality is that some of my meetings will be cancelled, some places I wanted to visit (Italy in April) will prevent me from hitting my normal targets. If they were simply going to extend or waive all qualifications, you’re right, but if it’s a catch up later in the year with reduced travel then the challenge is still as great and I’ll need every advantage I can get.
This post aged well.
Lol. I genuinely appreciate the snark. Look for tomorrow’s Reflection post.
If someone died as a result of your asymptomatically spreading the disease, that’ll be on you forever.